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After sports burnout, the focus is on football, basketball

John Millage Jr.'s Parkrose minor league All-Star team won the state baseball championship when he was 10 years old.

As a freshman at Parkrose High in 2001-02, Millage played football and basketball, then made the freshman baseball team as a catcher/center fielder. Nine games into the season, he transferred to Jefferson 'too late to go out for baseball,' he says.

Last year, Millage played football and basketball at Jeff but skipped baseball.

'I was burned out,' Millage says. 'I was really tired of sports and felt I needed a break.'

That didn't sit well with his father, John Sr., who had coached him in baseball from T-ball through Babe Ruth.

'It really upset me,' says the elder Millage, who had played baseball with Jefferson baseball coach Nathan Mosley at Jeff in the 1980s. 'He was excited about baseball when he was younger, but there were so many basketball leagues and camps in the spring and summer, and he faded from the baseball scene.'

As a junior next year, Millage probably will play on Jefferson's football varsity as a free safety and on the JV basketball team as a guard. And he says he will go out for baseball, too.